RAID 5 Question

Hi All:

We recently received a new server that contained 9 900GB drives (one being a hot spare). We need to create virtual disks with a size of less than 2000GB due to the OS we're installing. Is it safer to create a single RAID container across all of the disks and create 4 VDs to split the capacity, or to create multiple RAIDs containing just 3 disks a piece?

I have a 12 disk raid 5 running across 2 TB SATA drives that needed to rebuild a disk and it went fine in our MSA, you can get away with it. We are using it for ip camera data so in the event of a data loss failure we aren't out much.

Without knowing anything beyond 9 900 GB drives, I'd probably say 8 disk RAID 10 with hot spare if I had to pick anything based on the info provided. Then create volumes within the raid set.--How lucky am I to have known someone who is so hard to say good-bye to.

... what? I've seen arrays of 20 TB rebuild just fine. I find it odd that I even have to respond to such an odd statement.

I've seen more recoverable resiliency, without a loss of operations, with large RAID 6 volumes than I have with RAID 10. I've seen more non-booting failed RAID 10 cluster nodes than I have RAID 5 or RAID 6, although I've seen more RAID 5 arrays fall victim to outright drive failure + anomalous issue drives, so for me it's a toss-up. RAID 6 + hot spares + fast controller CPU for fast rebuilds is usually the quickest method of recovery that I've encountered.

... what? I've seen arrays of 20 TB rebuild just fine. I find it odd that I even have to respond to such an odd statement.

I've seen more recoverable resiliency, without a loss of operations, with large RAID 6 volumes than I have with RAID 10. I've seen more non-booting failed RAID 10 cluster nodes than I have RAID 5 or RAID 6, although I've seen more RAID 5 arrays fall victim to outright drive failure + anomalous issue drives, so for me it's a toss-up. RAID 6 + hot spares + fast controller CPU for fast rebuilds is usually the quickest method of recovery that I've encountered.

It's not that a large RAID5 array will never rebuild. it's that the odds are against you. RAID6 helps. So does RAID 50. Overall, RAID10 provides better protection, faster rebuilds, less write penalty and faster reads.